"The art of writing badly" is a phrase the Russian writer Valentin Kataev coined to describe the work that came out of the mauvist movement in Russia-a style of writing that consciously challenged Soviet dogma. In this book, Richard Borden discusses the cultural and political context from which these authors emerged and the development of "bad writing."
Beginning with a close examination of the work of Kataev, the best-known progenitor of "bad writing," Borden then broadens his study to include the "mauvist creations" of post-Stalinist writers Aksenov, Bitov, Sokolov, Limonov, Evgeny...